As you may have seen from my other thread, I've just "discovered" Arthur Bliss through Checkmate and I'm going to explore some more of his works. I've just been having a look at his discography but rather than pick something at random, has anyone got any favourite pieces you can recommend?

It's been some time since I listened to Bliss but I recall "Miracle in the Gorbals" and "Adam Zero" being rather good.

We've just played the march from "Things to come" with my orchestra (as part of a Music from the Movies" night - great fun. I remember doing the whole suite with a youth orchestra many years ago...

The Colour Symphony/Adam Zero coupling on Naxos is very persuasive.

They also do a nice recording of the Cello Concerto.

I am also a fan of the massive Piano Concerto.

his chamber music is pretty cool - there's quite a range, from the nice tuneful piano quintet to the spiky oboe quartet. the sonata for viola and piano is pretty good too.

He did a very nice Violin Concerto too, as I recall. I haven't heard it for years!

Thank you for all your recommendations. I've ordered two CDs, one has:

A Colour Symphony
Things to Come
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
Adam Zero
Discourse for Orchestra
Concerto for 2 Pianos and Orchestra
Christopher Columbus

and the other has:

String Quartet
Clarinet/Strings Quintet

so I think I've got a really good selection to explore to be going on with - thanks again

Yeah good spread! He really is an underrated composer, its a shame more people aren't into him.

Having listened to some more of his music now, I too can't understand why he's not more appreciated. Does anybody have any thoughts on why he's not more well known or performed?

I have to admit I've never heard of Ernest Meoran But I've just been listening to snippets of his Symphony in G Minor and you're right, I think I would like it. Thanks for mentioning him. There's a web site if anyone else is interested - http://www.moeran.com/index2.html
Does anyone know how his name is correctly pronounced please?

The more I listen to English composers, the more I like them

Moyran, I believe. You could also try Constant Lambert. You'd probably like The Rio Grande, cos it's really jazzy.

I've just been listening to it on YouTube and yes I like it - a bit Gershwin-esque do you think It was on an old record and the orchestra was the Halle, conducted by the composer!


I was just looking in a 1936 copy of The Gramophone (like you do! ) and by coincidence there's a review of Bliss's Quintet for Clarinet and Strings 1932....

---------------------------

BLISS’ QUINTET FOR CLARINET AND STRINGS (1932)

A word about that much-maligned creature the composer. Bliss now writes well-bred romantic music. Like Prokoviev, he was once naughty, and like Prokoviev he has repented the error of his ways. This seems to please a lot of people who like to see other people repenting the error of their ways.

We are not told what the composer thinks. Is he really of the opinion that, in common with Poulenc and Milhaud, he wrote trash in the 1920s? Does he derive pleasure from being treated as the ignorant little boy who has at last renounced the dunce’s cap and come out of the corner into the world of grown-ups? And is he entirely satisfied with those moral homilies which, in England, so often take the place of musical criticism, those wise head-shakings, those amazing dissertations on the composer’s “maturity”, as if they, the critics, had themselves suckled and weaned him?

We hope, one day, that musicians such as Bliss, Walton, and even Vaughan Williams, will give us an answer to these questions.

Meanwhile, and most important, here is a Clarinet Quintet of a surpassing loveliness - a work, as the experts remind us, which can be set by the side of the Clarinet Quintets of Mozart and Brahms, and not suffer by reasons of this exalted comparison. Bliss has the poise which is lacking in Bax, and a nice sense of discrimination which makes us think of Faure. The clarinet among the strings sounds, as it should sound, like a hamadryad let loose in a grove of birch trees.

Let me say straight away that here is a romantic work with which I have unreservedly fallen in love, and I hope the affair will not be a temporary one. Intimacy of thought, as expressed in music by so many contemporary English composers, can be an almost alarmingly embarrassing experience. Bliss is obviously incapable of hysteria, and in this Quintet demonstrates his ability to deliver a message quietly and leave out the inhibitions. The music is a distinguished as a Spanish grandee, and thanks be to God, our “rough island story” does not appear to have played too aggressive a part in its making. It should, in other words, appeal to all cultured cosmopolitans. That, to me, is a satisfying thought.

To criticise, either the technique of the writing, or the interlocking arrangement of themes which make up this exciting composition, would be an impertinence. It is sufficient that the composer not only says what he want to say in terms of this most difficult medium, but that it is unthinkable that he should say it in terms of any other medium. Bliss’ harmonic idiom is of the type which seems to demand, for its fullest realisation, a free contrapuntal treatment. In this a parallel may be traced with Hindemith. It should be noted, in parenthesis, that all chamber music tends to be polyphonic in character, as it is in the nature of a group of solo instruments, particularly strings, to interweave - such a medium as a rule providing the romantic composer with a means of escape from a too intensive preoccupation with keyboard-influenced harmony.

There are quite a number of reasons why this work should be in the possession of every music-lover who owns a gramophone. Perhaps the most clinching one, for a great many readers at any rate, is that it can be had (on four 12-inch Decca records) for the ridiculous, almost immodest price of 10s.* The reproduction on any machine is not merely good, it is realistic - in that we get the true vibrato quality of the strings, absent in most electrical recordings. I only know one other modern recording which gives us that: the Bax Oboe Quintet, done by the NGS. An excellent analytical note accompanies the records, written, as is fitting, by an enthusiast of the composer (it is a reprint of an article by Eric Blom in The Musical Times). Novello publish the score at 10s 6d.*

The Gramophone, March 1936, one shilling

* approx equivalent decimal values:
10s = 10 shillings = 50p
6d = sixpence = 2.5p

Um, he's actually quite well regarded in the brass band world! Checkmate is highly thought of in particular.

I've just been given a book called "Parry to Finzi" and there are chapters on "Twenty English Song Composers". I'm delighted to see that Meoran is one of them, along with Quilter, Ireland etc. It looks like a really good book - by Trevor Hold if anyone else is interested.

It's Moeran, not Meoran...

Thank you (I have the same trouble with Moelfre/Meolfre on Anglesey)

Because the first half of the twentieth century, during which Bliss was composing, was the best period for English composers since 1625, when Gibbons died, shortly after Byrd. The competition was fierce: until 1934, Elgar, Holst and Delius; from then on, Walton (Viola Concerto 1929; Belshazzar's Feast 1931) and Britten ("A Boy was born" 1933; Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge 1937, "Peter Grimes" 1945); throughout Bliss's lifetime, Vaughan Williams, whose symphonies from the 4th (1934) onward were of greater impact than anything by Bliss; and many other composers of comparable stature and equal appeal to Bliss, such as John Ireland, Frank Bridge, Constant Lambert, Gerald Finzi, Peter Warlock and Edmund Rubbra.

Two further points:

1) It is very common for a composer to fall out of favour with concert promoters immediately following his death (consider how Hindemith, who died in 1963, is only gradually coming back into favour);

2) The BBC, between 1959 and 1973, with its music under the direction of Sir William Glock,* went through a period when the favoured composers were those influenced by the New Viennese School (Schoenberg, Webern and Berg) and the late romantics were the composers who made way for them.

* Hans Keller was an influence also.

Thanks for those comments

Anyone wanting to hear some Bliss film music* could listen to BBC Radio 3 this evening, when the Ulster Orchestra plays the Suite "Things to Come" as the third item in a concert starting at 7 p.m.

* Not exactly incidental music, because (it is reported) Bliss wrote the music first and H G Wells adapted his book to the music.